Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery

This article will contain spoilers for the first four episodes of Star Trek Discovery. If you don't want to have the first four episodes of Star Trek Discovery spoiled, please, y'know, read something else for a while. 

So. Star Trek Discovery. 

A summary

It's good. It's enjoyable. It's entertaining. It's not a bad television show. I'm not sure that it's Star Trek, but it's fun.

What terrified me about the idea of a new Star Trek series is that there hasn't been a true Star Trek story for 13 years. The last proper Star Trek stories were told in the last few episodes of Enterprise, which concluded in 2005. 

A "proper" Star Trek story is a story with a moral compass, a dilemma of conscience, a difficult human decision told through the peculiarities of an alien species or culture, and a resolution from which we all learn something and grow up a little bit more. 

Since the end of Enterprise, there have been no Star Trek stories. There have been blockbuster action movies with Star Trek characters in them, but there have been no Star Trek stories. 

(I lie -- there have been Star Trek stories, and they've been told by the talented and passionate fans and Trek alumni who have created fan series such as Star Trek: Continues and Star Trek: Phase II. Unfortunately, these stories are obviously not canon, but they filled a substantial and lengthy vacuum of quality Trek narratives.)

The story of Discovery, so far, is not a Trek story. Perhaps it may become one, who's to know at this stage. We've never experienced Star Trek in a long-form presentation, where episodes link constantly together and a growing story arc emerges. Perhaps the whole, rather than the parts, will be where the moral tale lies.

Starfleet is not an organisation of war

Starfleet is an organisation of peaceful exploration and scientific discoveries. It's not a military operation -- except when it is. There are two sides to war, and if the other guys want to fight you, you have little option whether to fight or back down. Starfleet is well equipped to fight a war, and given the need, will obviously do so in order to regain and maintain peace. That's how it works.

If anything, I find it interesting that in the Discovery timeline (for lack of a better description at this point), the war itself has resulted directly from the Federation's efforts at peaceful encounters.

The Klingons have changed (again)

Yep. They've changed. Again. They changed before, and we didn't care. Why do we care now?

I have no issue with the appearance of the "new" Klingons, nor the changes to Klingon culture. I just think the Klingons are a bit dull. This may be partly by design, perhaps it's partly the fault of the actors. I find they have little charisma.

The Klingon language, once rich in guttural grunts and coughs, seems now a repetitive barrage of equally spaced and monotonous syllabic sputters, with little to no emotion from the actors who seem focused entirely on remembering which phlegm noise comes next. T'Kuvma, the key Klingon in the pilot episode (or as I like to call him: "We couldn't afford Idris Elba"), speaks all of his lines in stanzas of three syllables, as if the actor could memorise the weird sounds only in triplets.

Also, the new Klingons have noses inside their noses. Just saying. Can't be unseen.

Breaking Gene's rules

Gene Roddenberry stipulated that in any of "his" Star Trek series, there would be no interpersonal conflict between Starfleet officers. By the 22nd century (or later), humans had achieved a kind of inner Zen, and no longer fought with each other -- only with aliens of differing cultures and moralities. 

This is why, when Deep Space Nine was developed not long after Roddenberry's passing, the decision was made to team Starfleet characters up alongside Bajoran militia officers. If we can't fight amongst ourselves, lets force ourselves to get along with a war-like super-religious group of individuals, and let the conflict write itself. And it worked.

Since then, however, interpersonal conflict has gone crazy. And it's okay. Just because Gene made the universe of Star Trek doesn't mean that others can't come along and break the rules. It's okay. I promise.

Shifting gears to a competing franchise, don't forget that George Lucas made the Star Wars universe, including the prequels. If Disney and JJ Abrams hadn't broken George's established rules and made something new and exciting, we'd be stuck with green screens, awful acting from amazing actors, a duck-like creature with floppy ears, and "the high ground".

So, in short

Discovery is good. Star Trek is back on TV. It's a good time to be alive.

Brief thoughts on unanimously terrible movies

So, there have been some doozies lately. You didn't ask for it, but here's my opinion on three of them, in no particular order whatsoever.

Suicide Squad

I did not have high expectations for this film, but I managed to avoid spoilers. So that's something. I also had no clue what the film was about, beyond it being a DC Comics license and having ostensibly something to do with a squad of people who may have some connection to suicide.

Turns out, it's not that bad. It's not great, but I don't feel like I wasn't entertained for two hours.

A tremendous amount of screen time is dedicated to introductions and backstories, as a result of the film having a massive cast of characters. Turns out, after all of that effort, that you only really need to care about two of them, and the rest just provide occasional comic relief.

Jared Leto's Joker character is quite impressive, not at all derivative of Ledger's Joker from the Nolan films, and does a good job of being appropriately unhinged. Having said that, I'm getting a bit tired of "unpredictable and unhinged" characters. It's starting to sound like lazy screenwriting. I can't tell if the character is psychotic, or their demeanor just doesn't match the last page of the script because who cares, they're UNHINGED.

There's one scene in a bar that's GREAT, and it's a terrible shame the rest of the movie wasn't as well put together as that one scene.

Also, Margot Robbie has no idea whether she's from Australia, New York or she's Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke.

Ghostbusters

This is bad. This is really, really bad. I had potential to be awesome, but it's not. It's just bad. Wait -- not only did it have potential to be awesome, it would have been EASY for this to be awesome. But no. It's terrible. It's a stinking, laboured humour-laden, trying-too-hard, confused and frustrating turd of a film. I shall explain.

Cameos. So -- SPOILER ALERT -- (inasmuch as one can spoil a film such as this) the original Ghostbusters (or the ones who are still alive, at least) show up in cameos. As random characters. For some reason. All of them. Every major character from Ghostbusters shows up, with the exceptions of Rick "I've quit acting" Moranis and Harold "I'm dead" Ramis.

Complete denial of source material. Kind of. So...this film is confused. It's clearly a continuation of the Ghostbusters cinematic universe, but it isn't. It's clearly the future of the same timeline, but it isn't. Clearly, there are STRONG and UNDENIABLE connections to the original film(s), but yet, there aren't. There's Slimer. There's the Staypuft Marshmallow Man. There's abundant other alarming similarities. Yet the screenwriters go so far out of their way to never mention a connection to the original films that if they went any further above and beyond, they'd accidentally find their way back to mentioning it. It's impossibly frustrating as a viewer. Is it a reboot? Is it a sequel? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS

Also, all of the jokes are so laboured it's painful. Ghostbusters wasn't built on jokes. It was built on situational humour and four excellent comedians. Ghostbusters (the new one) ALSO has four excellent comic actors, but they don't react to the situations they're in, they just run off stupid sight gags, slapstick scenes and running jokes no one cares about.

I have a suspicion the film could be improved by tighter editing; stop each gag as soon as it's funny, don't dwell on it trying to congratulate yourself like a masturbating monkey at the zoo seeking approval from the giggling audience. It's not working. Stop.

I do not want to watch this movie ever again.

Independence Day: Resurgence

I'm always filled with existential dread when a late remake or sequel is made to a film that had a strong and lasting impact on my youth. Jurassic World terrified me, and rightly so, for it had the potential to tear the goodness out of Jurassic Park, one of the most significant movies of my childhood. (Yes, even given the sorry state of Jurassic Park III. It's about nostalgia, here.) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Shia LeBouoeufeufff scared me, because it also could have -- and almost did, were it not for my ability to repress ever having seen it -- the entire Indiana Jones trilogy. Independence Day: Resurgence could easily do the same thing.

But it didn't. At least, not immediately. My best summary of Independence Day: Resurgence is that it was a great movie for two hours, and a terrible one ever after. It was a heap of fun, for as long as it was on the screen distracting me from everything that was wrong with it. It was awesome, until I had a chance to think about it without an explosion or Jeff Goldblum to remind me that I should be watching and Independence Day movie.

After leaving the cinema, however, I quickly realised that Independence Day: Resurgence was pretty terrible, had some really questionable ideas and scenes in it, and probably isn't something I care to watch again in a hurry.

Judd Hirsch. I mean, it's great you got him to come back. Did you have to make him surf a wave in a fishing trawler and save a bunch of schoolkids in a school bus just....because? He was originally comic relief, and he did a great job. Now he's a superhero. What.

The African war lord. He served one purpose in this film -- to tell the appropriate people at the appropriate time how to kill the queen alien. He......didn't do this. They just kinda figured it out for themselves. What an excellent storytelling opportunity!

Also, why wasn't the entire movie about him? His back story sounds more interesting than everything that happened in Independence Day: Resurgence.

In summary: Good movie, if you don't think about it. Bad movie if you do. I suggest a strong concussion as soon as the credits start rolling.

Instant Nostalgia: The Podcast that Reviews Itself

Update, November 2023: All of the links in this article are dead.

You really should go here and listen to Dan's spectacular podcast, Instant Nostalgia. You should do this not only because I appear in Episode 09, but because the entire concept is fantastic and you need to listen to the entire series to get the full effect. Go on, you know you want to.

Why Anakin building C-3PO is stupid.

I'm probably not the first person to have this idea. I'm sorry. I can't be bothered to do any research to see who else has already figured this out. If you've strung all of these points together before I have, good for you. Have a cookie.

One of the many loose, tattered and mismatched threads of chaos winding its way through the storyline of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace is the ludicrous idea that Anakin Skywalker, at the age of nine, built the protocol droid C-3PO.

This is very clearly one of the gigantic neon signs that George Lucas insisted on littering throughout The Phantom Menace. Uncle George's signs all say the same thing: Anakin Skywalker is the greatest kid that's ever existed. He's a whiz with technology, he can build outrageous things, he can fly a deathtrap around a canyon better than anyone else, and the Force is with him because he can randomly mash buttons in a spaceship and shoot battle droids by accident.

He also built his mother a protocol droid. I can imagine the day he wheeled its naked, wiry form into the kitchen: "Mother, I've made you a monster. It's hideous, unfinished, smarmy, speaks with a British accent, and its elbows don't bend, so there's no chance it can help you with the dishes."

There are two things wrong with this entire scenario. The first is obvious: Anakin is an idiot.

“He’s a protocol droid, to help Mom.”

Great, kid. Mom doesn't need a protocol droid. Mom is a slave. Mom doesn't need to speak six million forms of communication. Mom also probably won't appreciate having to constantly spit-polish the exterior of a metallic gold translator with a superiority complex, either.

The second problem with the whole Anakin-builds-3PO concept is that there's no real reason why Anakin should have built, specifically, a protocol droid. Anakin could have built anything. Anakin could have built something customised to his (or his mom's) situation. Anakin could have built something, y'know, cool.

C-3PO is one of a series of protocol droids. Without going full nerd on you, he's part of the 3PO series, he's made by a company with the remarkably stupid name of Cybot Galactica, and he's -- assuming the alphabet in Galactic Basic Standard (Star Wars' overcomplicated way of saying "English") has the same number of letters -- one of about 26 extant units. To put this into perspective, several other 3PO models appeared in the original Star Wars trilogy alone:

From left to right:

• C-3PO, the gold one, companion to R2D2.
• E-3PO, the silver one, incredibly rude droid C-3PO encountered at Cloud City.
• K-3PO, the white one, generally hung around Rebel bases doing important things, was standing about in the control room during the first Death Star battle, and was later seen staggering around in the Rebel base on Hoth.
• R-3PO, the red one, also seen staggering about in the Rebel base on Hoth. Later, apparently, revealed to be an Imperial traitor in one of the expanded universe things that I don't care about.

So, Anakin built an exact knock-off of an already existing product that did not actually suit his mother's purposes, and -- if anything -- would actually hinder his mother.

This is the equivalent of an amazing technological and mechanical whiz kid who has the ability to build a car in his garage from scratch, and instead of choosing to build an exact knock-off of a Bugatti Veyron, OR a practical vehicle that suits his (or his mother's) purposes, OR a completely customised vehicle that's exactly what he (or his mother) needs, instead.....he builds an exact replica of Volvo.

Why Geordi La Forge is not a great character

Don't get me wrong -- I like LeVar Burton, and I like what he did with the character. And he did considerable things, because he had very little to work with.

So, what are Geordi's defining traits? He only has two of them.

• he's kind of blind

• he's not good with women

And that's essentially it. You're probably wondering about the "kind of" qualifier attached to Geordi's blindness -- he's not blind. He has a gizmo that allows him to see. He has a disability, but he doesn't cope with the disability inasmuch as in 99% of episodes, he doesn't have a disability. He is not in any way different to any other character, save for a hair barrette over his eyes. Supposedly Geordi suffers from headaches as a result of wearing the visor, but that's not mentioned very often, and it was virtually never a plot point.

I guess this is something that's charming in hindsight. We can look back at the '80s, and see that it was normal and acceptable for a TV show to have a token minority character -- in this case, a vision-impaired guy -- but it was also okay to sidestep the dramatic handicap (no offence intended) of having to regularly acknowledge and deal with the character's difficulty or inability to perform tasks by simply handwaving the disability with technobabble and completely ignoring it.

Geordi's blindness and his VISOR gadget were mentioned a few times, for example:

• the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint" has Dr. Crusher give Geordi an examination, leading to the introduction of the headaches the visor causes, and a bit of techsplanation of how the thing works

• in "Heart of Glory" we get to see through Geordi's visor for the first and last time (sort of, more in a moment)

• in "The Enemy", Geordi's VISOR fails completely, rendering him genuinely blind for about half an episode

• in "The Mind's Eye", Geordi is brainwashed by Romulans who jam horrible imagery directly into his VISOR's implants, and then use the VISOR's carrier frequencies to remote-control him

• "Parallels" had Geordi as the cause of Worf's quantum universe shifts, as his VISOR emitted some kind of frequency that caused the Klingon to leap between dimensions

• in Star Trek: Generations, the two Klingon sisters stick a webcam into Geordi's VISOR to watch him bathe (not making this up)

• in Star Trek: First Contact, they gave up on it entirely and just gave him some mechanical eyeballs

Apart from the one episode -- "The Enemy" -- where Geordi is blinded because EM interference on the planet he's stranded on fries his VISOR, his blindness was never genuinely used as a unique plot point.

I think it may not have hurt to have limited Geordi in some way, rather than giving him a tool on his face that actually allows him to see stuff a sighted person cannot. (Infrared, EM radiation, etc.) Most characters are built upon something that's lacking, not an additional ability. Picard lacks family connections, Data lacks (but desires) emotion, Worf lacks other Klingons, Spock lacks (but does not desire) emotion, Odo lack(ed) any knowledge of where he came from or what he was, The EMH lacked a name, Neelix lacked decorum. All of the best characters were absent something.

All Geordi was really lacking was skill with women.

Nerf gun shenanigans

I was inspired by a recent Video Copilot sample of various science fiction weapon effects, so I made my own (using their Optical Flares plug in, among other things).

Enjoy:

Nerf Nerfy McNerf Nerf. After Effects. Yeah.

After effects, Optical Flares, Nerf gun. That's about it. The background is an old render of a reasonably crappy corridor I made a bazillion years ago. Enjoy.

Why the Super Mario Bros movie isn't that bad

It's certainly not that great, either, but I intend to play devil's advocate here, so give me a chance.

It HAD to be made, and the source material is ridiculous. It was utterly inevitable that the Super Mario Bros. movie was going to happen. It was released at the peak of Nintendo's popularity, right after the Super Nintendo hit the shelves. If Caruso, Eberts, Joffe and Weston hadn't made it, someone else would have. And it would have still sucked, because the source material is absolutely ludicrous. There's no way to turn "plumbers descend pipes, find mushroom land" into a movie that everyone will like, let alone one that anyone will like.

It was the first movie based on a video game. While the original is occasionally the best, more often than not the first version of something is riddled with flaws and gets perfected over time. Video game movies are very much the latter. While no movies based on video games can really be described as awesome, there are certainly later films that are better than this one (Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill). I suspect part of the difficulty in developing a film based on a game is that films by their nature remove the most powerful aspect of a video game -- interaction. The story is set in stone. What makes a video game movie enjoyable is how cleverly it deviates from the expected, yet how true it remains to the source material. More to come on that.

Super Mario Bros. has the bones of a good movie -- the protagonists are likeable, the villain is appropriately detestable, the love interest is attractive, the comic relief is amusing. The story on a whole is a fairy tale and a take on the hero's journey as the two Brooklyn plumbers learn of a new, hidden world, and pursue an adventure there, becoming enlightened heroes by the end of the film. The loose end in the development of this film is that the source material -- the video game -- has a pretty stupid story that doesn't translate at all to a film without some serious modification, and even then, without setting the entire thing within a character's hallucination, it's still going to be batshit crazy. I suppose it's no less batshit crazy than the universes of, say, Labyrinth or The Neverending Story, but Super Mario Bros. doesn't really pretend to be a fantasy movie. Again, this all falls back to the two points I've made above: the source material is ludicrous, and no one had made a movie based on a game before.

A lot of elements of the game's story were changed for the film, and were probably changed for the best. Thanks to Jurassic Park, which was released a year after Super Mario Bros., but was well in development while Super Mario Bros. was being filmed, there are a lot of dinosaurs and reptiles in the Mushroom Kingdom. This is presumably an extension of the Yoshi character from the video games, who is represented as a kind of midget velociraptor in a couple of scenes in the film. There's not a lot of consistency in what's a reptile and what's a fungus, though.

The old king of the mushroom kingdom was "de-evolved" from a (presumably) humanoid form into a huge fungus, while most other creatures are de-evolved into goombas (small-headed huge-bodied reptiles). There's no explanation as to why the king evolved from mushrooms. There's no explanation as to whether the king's daughter, Daisy, is also made of fungus. Nor is there any explanation as to why Daisy keeps a pet dinosaur, given that the villains are established to be reptilian. Nor is there any explanation as to why everyone else seems to de-evolve only into reptiles. Was the king the only fungus-ancestored being in the Mushroom Kingdom?

It took me a while to figure out that the old king, who has de-evolved into a pulsating pile of fungus, was simply de-evolved further than anyone who became a reptile. Presumably if one was to de-evolve a goomba, it too would become fungus. (Although goombas were evil mushrooms in the video games, if I recall). All of this then begs the further question of why is there such discrimination between reptiles and fungus if everyone's ultimately fungus anyway...

Although if that's the case, why did King Koopa de-evolve directly into green slime without passing through a fungal stage? A little bit of consistency goes such a long, long way.

There are a lot of nice elements that reflect the video game, such as the tiny wind-up Bob-omb, the Thwomp bar, the Koopahari Desert. Some insane elements of the game that would play out very poorly in live action are handled nicely, such as the jumping boots that allow Mario and Luigi to leap huge distances.

I still enjoy watching Super Mario Bros., largely because it brings back memories of the time it was released, and because it's not the worst film ever made. I forgive it because it had to be made, and I can't see any real way it could have been made better. I forgive it because it's not drowning in plot holes. I forgive it because the production values are pretty high. I forgive it because it's based on source material no one should be burdened with as a starting point. I forgive it because Bob Hoskins.

Rest in peace, Bob.

Not very good: Thoughts on Wolf Creek 2

No. Redeeming. Qualities.

This movie has no redeeming qualities.

I shall summarise in point form my various opinions, because it's all I can be bothered to do. This will be pretty much entirely spoilers, but given that the movie's already spoiled by virtue of being terrible, there's not much to lose.

• The character of Mick Taylor, such as he is, isn't really strong enough to warrant an appearance in a sequel. He was cool in the original Wolf Creek, because he was new and interesting, but he hasn't changed since then, and he's still just a stereotype. He's essentially Jason Voorhees with an Australian accent.
• There were numerous moments throughout the film where I expected something to happen, but it didn't, and the outcome was not as interesting as I was expecting. Case in point: When Ryan Corr's might-as-well-be-nameless character is trouncing about in a paddock in his orange Jeep, relatively free and unscathed after having removed the dead backpacker from his car, I expected the story was going to shift to a vendetta story as Paul (evidently that was his name) becomes the hunter, and Mick the hunted. This did not happen.
• The whole "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" scene goes on far, far too long, and nothing useful comes of it. This was a perfect opportunity for some character development for Mick (something he desperately needs), but instead we spend twenty minutes singing drinking songs and playing trivia.
• Actually, speaking of character development for Mick: He's basically the personification of the Alf Stewart internet meme. Except the Alf meme has had more character development.
• How many times did the writers get to the end of a scene, realise there's not really much they could do to actually end the scene, so they just knock one of them unconscious and change locations? (Four, if you're curious.)
• Another scene that disappointed: I had expected the old couple in the farm house to turn out to be Mick's parents, or something. Another opportunity for character development, and an awkward situation, to boot. Didn't happen.
• There's a really nice shot early in the film, during the blue-truck vs. orange-Jeep chase, where the dust from the Jeep is illuminated by the spotlights on the truck as they speed through the empty landscape.
• Why does Mick have catacombs beneath his dwelling? Wait, was that where he lives? Didn't he live in a junkyard in the original Wolf Creek? Still, why are there catacombs in the Northern Territory? Did Mick build them himself?
• Was it truly necessary to have the first twenty minutes of the film in German with subtitles? Does the expected demographic for this kind of film appreciate subtitles? Did I just generalise horribly? Yes. Yes, I did.
• On the up side: nice use of animal sounds for Mick's various vehicles.
• Kangaroos. Why?

People I supposedly look like

Jamie Oliver. Resemblance: 0%.

Brian Thompson. Resemblance: 25%.

Hugo Weaving. Resemblance: 90%.

I have, over the years, been accused of looking like various people. I'm not sure if I do, but hey. Here are some of the more accurate ones:

Jamie Oliver I was once told I look "a bit" like Jamie Oliver. By "a bit", I assume the person meant "not in any conceivable way", as I do not, in fact, resemble Jamie Oliver in the slightest. I also cannot cook.

Nick Cave I'm not entirely sure that I can agree with my alleged resemblance to The Bad Seeds frontman Nick Cave. I can't entirely disagree, though. When I was younger, I had a similar hairline. (Now, I cling to the belief I have a hairline at all.)

Brian Thompson Mr. Thompson is probably best known for the role of the alien bounty hunter in The X-Files, but he's had a few other recognisable parts, including roles in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, and the Mortal Kombat movies. I look a bit like him, but only when he was younger. He's…changed.

Nicholas Hope British character actor well known for his appearance as Bubby in Bad Boy Bubby. Yeah, I look a bit like him. But I look like Nicholas Hope, not Bubby. It's splitting hairs. I know. You would, too.

Hugo Weaving You probably know Hugo from The Matrix, the Lord of the Rings series and Captain America. I know him as "that guy I kinda look like". This is not news to me. I've been told this for decades, now. (Boy, how I love being able to measure time in decades. Screw you, getting old.)

Trevor Phillips I also bear a passing resemblance, apparently, to a fictional nutjob in a violent video game. At least it's a popular violent video game.

And it's not Pokemon.

Could be worse.

Nick Cave. Resemblance: 10%.

Nicholas Hope. Resemblance: 50%.

100% match.

Heroes of Science Volume III, now +21

I've just posted the third edition of Heroes of Science, which features another 21 science heroes, including Brian Greene, Peter Higgs, Lawrence Krauss, Wolfgang Pauli, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, Andrei Sakharov, David Hilbert, Lord Kelvin, Emmy Noether, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Andrew Wiles, Norman Borlaug, Barbara McClintock, Tim Berners-Lee, Steven Pinker, B F Skinner, Konrad Lorenz and Edward O Wilson!

You can check it out at DeviantART, and there's an FAQ over here.

Thanks, everyone, for your support and comments on the various incarnations of the Heroes of Science figures. You can find more posts on colonpipe.com about them by clicking this linky thing here.